NASA probe gets to work on Mars

InSight’s first image of the Red Planet

Following its successful touchdown on Mars last week, the NASA probe InSight is getting ready to start its primary mission: mapping the Red Planet’s interior. Engineers deliberately landed the $1 billion craft in a flat, unremarkable area they describe as “Kansas without the corn,” reports The New York Times. After completing system checks, the probe will deploy three instruments to study the planet. The first is a set of seismometers so sensitive that they can measure surface movements less than the width of a hydrogen atom. These will record “Marsquakes” vibrations, which will reveal the nature and layout of the planet’s rock layers. The second device, a heat probe, will burrow 16 feet into the ground and take the planet’s temperature. Its readings will give a sense of how active Mars is—how much heat is still flowing from decaying radioactive elements at its core. The third instrument will use radio transmissions to measure how much the planet is wobbling on its axis. That will enable scientists to deduce the size of the planet’s core and whether it is molten or solid. All of this information will shed light on how Mars and the solar system’s other rocky planets formed some 4.6 billion years ago. “This is our first opportunity to look deep inside another planet,” says Rain Irshad, who worked on InSight’s instruments, and to “find out why it ended up the way it did.” ■